Intel Core i3-530 hits retail sale ahead of official launch

The CPU world is a strange place. The competition to be the first to post the specifications of new processors among tech publications is significant and the same competition pushes retail outlets to let the cat out of the bag early as well. Such is the case today with the Intel Core i3-530 chips popping up on a Canadian retail site.

Considering that the chip is not yet officially launched by Intel, taking orders for the thing is a bit pre-mature. Canadian retailer A-Power lists the CPU running at 2.9GHz with 512KB of cache and a 4MB L3 cache.

The price for the chips works out to about $150 here in America. The official launch of the processor is expected to be at the beginning of the year. Intel has confirmed that the chips are in production. I bet Intel forces the site to take the processor down faster than you can say NDA. This is one of the chips on that roadmap that popped up back in November.